Meet the New GOP Plan to End Medicare, Same as the Old GOP Plan to End Medicare

We here in the Democratic Whip Press shop will give Republicans credit for their transparency. They are not even trying to hide the fact that their “Cut, Cap and End Medicare” bill would end the program’s guarantee.

Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said yesterday the plan “basically mirrors the budget proposal that the House passed this year.”

That would be the same Republican budget proposal that ends the Medicare guarantee and more than doubles heath care costs for seniors, all while preserving tax breaks for the wealthy.

“…stands out as one of the most ideologically extreme pieces of major budget legislation to come before Congress in years, if not decades.”

“…The legislation would inexorably subject Social Security and Medicare to deep reductions.”

“…before the debt limit could be raised, Congress would have to approve a constitutional balanced budget amendment that essentially requires cuts even deeper than those in the Ryan budget. Reaching and maintaining a balanced budget in the decade ahead while barring any tax increases would necessitate deep cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. After all, by 2021, total expenditures for these three programs will be nearly 45 percent greater than expenditures for all other programs (except interest payments) combined. Big cuts in these programs would be inevitable.”

In addition, the extreme and draconian Republican proposal would reverse decades of precedent that exempt cuts to basic services for the most vulnerable among us. More from the CBPP:

“Since the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law of 1985, all such laws have exempted the core basic assistance programs for the poorest Americans from such across-the-board cuts. “Cut, Cap, and Balance,” by contrast, specifically subjects all such programs to across-the-board cuts if its spending caps would be exceeded.”

“It does so even as it seeks to erect a constitutional firewall to safeguard tax cuts and tax breaks for the most well-off Americans. Thus, an impoverished elderly widow living on Supplemental Security Income — which provides benefits that lift people to just 75 percent of the poverty line — could have her assistance cut back under the measure’s across-the-board budget cuts even as millionaire hedge-fund managers retained their lucrative carried-interest tax breaks.”